1998-12-12 KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas, Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA, USA/Source 2

Notes

A very good FM broadcast recording. It is clearly sourced from an FM broadcast because there is very little dynamic range, a characteristic that is unfortunately common among US radio stations. The frequency response extends to about 17 kHz, and the 19 kHz pilot tone is clearly visible in the spectrogram.

Source 1 from this concert has much better dynamic range than this FM broadcast recording and is highly recommended over this version.

Unfortunately, this recording is inherently lossy due to MPEG delay used at both the soundboard and FM broadcast feeds for this concert.

According to a post by BRAT (official depechemode.com webmaster) on the fan-site Home, both the soundboard feed and the FM broadcast feed were run through MPEG delay, causing MP3-like sound. The post is quoted below:

The disc I sent out to people was off the air.

I have a copy direct from KROQ's broadcast board, but it still sucks because BOTH the board feed, and the broadcast feed were run through a MPEG delay. MPEG delay (for any possible profanity) = crap, MP3-like sound.

The only good copy I have heard is the KROQ video that is on depechemode.com. All others are horrible.

Even if you knew people at KROQ (like I did), you could not get a flawless copy. It still had sh*tty artifacts through it. The only reason why my copy might sound better is because I was using a $400 Radio Shack antenna (hacked into a neighbor's antenna). ;)

BRAT

Sister Of Night, A Question Of Lust, and Enjoy The Silence were performed as acoustic renditions. Before this show, A Question Of Lust had only been performed one other time in this manner on the Singles tour, at 1998-12-09 Sacramento. You can find a recording of the band's soundcheck at the 1998-12-02 Boise, ID concert, where these acoustic versions were rehearsed.

During Never Let Me Down Again, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins joined to sing lead vocals and play the guitar. The Smashing Pumpkins covered the song for the 1998 Depeche Mode tribute album For The Masses.

An MP3 of a bit of relevant post-show radio chatter is included as a bonus in the archive download.

Listen

You can listen to this entire recording below.

Track list

1. [6:04] Play Barrel Of A Gun
2. [5:02] Play Policy Of Truth
3. [4:43] Play It's No Good
4. [7:59] Play Walking In My Shoes
5. [4:31] Play Sister Of Night (*)
6. [3:57] Play A Question Of Lust (*)
7. [4:02] Play Enjoy The Silence
8. [5:22] Play In Your Room
9. [5:43] Play Behind The Wheel
10. [7:13] Play Personal Jesus
11. [6:55] Play Never Let Me Down Again (With Billy Corgan)

• Total time: 1:01:31

Bonus tracks:

1. [1:44] Play Postshow

Lineage

• silver CD (not sure which one) -> Audiograbber -> FLAC level 8

Download

• Download ZIP - FLAC 16-bit 44.1KHz - 451.17MB